HeadmasterJC - The Battle of the Soul

THE BATTLE OF THE SOUL

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city. - Proverbs 16:32

Jason Caros | September 14, 2026 (revised)

Knowing Oneself

My family enjoys going to local music events, including concerts in the park where we can sit outdoors and listen to hometown musicians perform songs of various genres in a family setting. Some of the bands in these venues play oldies from the 70s, 80s and 90s, which my wife and I enjoy, and our daughter who is in her early twenties enjoys, for the most part, but my high-school-aged son—not so much. This is beside the point.

Knowing how many years of practice it takes to get to their level, I greatly appreciate the talent on display by these performers as well as how much they seem to love their art. The musicians are inspiring and sometimes their songs stir up something in me. One of the catchy numbers that the band played one time was All My Favorite Songs (a more contemporary tune by a band called Weezer). The chorus stuck with me. The song begins like this:

All my favorite songs are slow and sad

All my favorite people make me mad

Everything that feels so good is bad, bad, bad

All my favorite songs are slow and sad

(Chorus) I don't know what's wrong with me

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

I don't know what's wrong with me

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

“What’s wrong with me?” or a more declarative form of the question, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” is a healthy question to ask. It is an age-old reflection, and as imperfect human beings we have lots of opportunities throughout our lives to consider it. In fact, wise people from the ancient world all the way up to the present time advise us to be conscious of the ways we’ve gone wrong and of the negative desires that sometimes hound us. Furthermore, these sages say that if you don’t ask yourself the question there is something even more seriously wrong with you. It’s a sign that you lack self-knowledge, or even the beginnings of self-knowledge. In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know about the most important part of living—your own human life—and this knowledge is a sine qua non for living well. Fortunately, we can draw upon the wisdom of the ages to provide us with some good answers to the question of what is wrong with us.

“What’s wrong with me?” is a good question to ask oneself when something has just gone wrong, but it is also important to repeat it as part of an ongoing process of self-examination that can lead to human growth and flourishing. Related to self-reflection, “Know Thyself,” is a famous maxim that has traveled to us from ancient Greece on the long-flowing stream of time. First popularized in the 6th century BC by Thales, the father of Western philosophy, used by countless Greco-Roman thinkers, and later adopted by early Christian teachers, it has been used ever since to promote knowledge and virtuous living, and in Orthodox Christianity, a life lived in communion with God.[1]

What does Know Thyself mean? In a nutshell, it is an injunction to live well. Its aim is, first, to prompt each of us to inquire about what it means to live as a human being— rather than, say, as a dog or a cat or a beetle or a tree—the answer being that we have a unique human nature, not the nature of some other kind of creature. Second, to guide us to live according to this nature and know what thoughts and actions correspond to good living, ultimately helping us to live truly good lives. This was the ultimate pursuit of ancient philosophers like Socrates and theologians like Saint Paul the Apostle. As an essential part of this lifelong investigation, they pursued what philosophy terms To Agathon—the Highest Good—which for Paul was explicitly the God of the Old and New Testaments.

In the remainder of this essay, I will describe a model for self-knowledge originally developed about 2,400 years ago that helped to explain why we do the things we do and how to direct our interests and actions in a good direction, a heavenly one. Most importantly, the model ultimately deals with self-governance and virtuous living—how we can rule over our own negative passions and desires, which ultimately enslave us intellectually and morally. With this in mind, let’s start with the battle within…

Interior Warfare

Why do we do wrong? Socrates, the great teacher (didaskalos / διδάσκαλος) that he was, though he denied being one, emphasized an important relationship between knowledge and virtue, and he seemed to believe that people would not knowingly do wrong. In his ethical schema, ignorance is the chief culprit. St. Paul, on the other hand, emphasized that error or sin goes beyond knowing when he said: “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do…I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind (nous),[2] and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:15, 23-24). So, for Paul, and this is traditional Christian teaching, the will is an integral part of the equation. Knowledge is not enough.

The battle that St. Paul described in his Epistle to the Romans pertains to a struggle described by the ancients as psychomachia, Greek for “battle of the soul.” To this end, you have probably heard the old saying, “The devil made me do it!” As a mere human being, you have certainly been confronted with a temptation where you knew the good thing to do but something pulled at you in the other direction, right? The moral tug-of-war intimated by St. Paul reminds me of the character in a story who has a little angel whispering in his ear to do one thing and a little devil whispering in the other ear to do another. This imagery can be found in stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where Jim talks about Pap having a good angel on one shoulder and a bad one on the other, or in the animated film, The Emperor’s New Groove, when Kronk’s shoulder angel and devil appear during moments of moral conflict.

This picture is rooted in an actual battle described by important figures such as Saint Hermas, one of the Seventy Apostles, who in the first century AD said, "There are two angels with a man—one of righteousness and the other of iniquity…."[3] It was also described by the seventh-century Church Father, Saint Maximos the Confessor, who spoke in this way: “Our intellect lies between angel and demon, each of which works for its own ends, the one encouraging virtue and the other vice. The intellect has both the authority and the power to follow or resist whichever it wishes to. The angelic powers urge us towards what is holy. Our natural instincts and our probity of intention assist us. But the passions and sinfulness of intention reinforce the provocation of the demons.”[4]

Prior to the advent of Christianity, the ancient Greek philosophers were well aware of this internal struggle, and it was their ideas that later gave rise to the term psychomachia.[5] The concept was adopted by the Church Fathers who popularized another saying to build on Know Thyself and that phrase is “Attend to Thyself” (Proseche seauto / Πρόσεχε σεαυτῷ). This line, and similar expressions, are found early in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, and a variety of other books of the Bible: “Attend to yourself and keep your heart diligently,” or “Attend to yourself, that there be no hidden iniquitous word in your heart” are two examples (4:9, 15:9). Relatedly, we can read in the third chapter of The Life of St. Anthony the Great, the father of monasticism, that his very first ascetic practice that he undertook even before he began his life in the desert was “to attend to himself." But how does a person attend to oneself?

Reading the Map

An ancient way to maintain vigilance and to struggle against the negative passions[6] was to follow what you might call the Old Map of the Soul.[7] The philosopher Plato popularly formulated this map, which describes “soul powers” or faculties. Pre-Christian Jewish philosophers like Philo of Alexandria adopted it, and Christian theologians (i.e. the Church Fathers) used it extensively. Formulated for therapeutic purposes, this map helps one to acquire self-knowledge and to attain to spiritual healing and purity of heart.[8]

Modern writers sometimes refer to the three powers of the soul as the Tripartite Soul, a term that Plato himself did not use. I generally avoid this term, as it may encourage someone to think about a human soul formally partitioned into three sections, so I prefer to simply consider that there are three faculties or powers at work in us, either in concert or against one another, that lead to good or corrupt living. The first power is Logos, or the Intelligent power. Logos is the driver of the human soul, so to speak—think of a charioteer holding the reins of two horses.[9] Ideally, this is the element that seeks truth, understanding, and reality and makes moral judgements; when it is well ordered, it is prudent and discerning. At the very core of this intelligent faculty is the nous—often described by the Church Fathers as the “eye of the soul” or the highest faculty of the heart. While the logos reasons and analyzes, the nous is the faculty anchored in the heart that directly perceives and experiences God, and when the nous is cleansed, it properly informs the logos to align it with this reality. The second is Thumos, the Spirited (Incensive) or passionate power of the soul, which should strive to do the good; when it is well ordered, it is courageous and persevering in the face of trials and temptations. Finally, Epithumia[10] is the Appetitive or desiring faculty of the soul; when well ordered it is tempered by self-control and characterized by the desire and affection for Beauty, the Beauty of Truth and Goodness.

You may have noticed the correspondence between each power of the soul and the three Transcendentals—Truth, Goodness and Beauty. There is also a relationship between each aspect of the soul and the Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence with Logos, Courage with Thumos, Temperance with Epithumia, and all three with Justice, as Justice is the virtue that creates harmony among all the faculties of the soul. Each power of the soul is a seat of the various virtuous passions, but this is also the case for vices and the sinful passions such as foolishness (opposed to prudence), cowardice (opposed to courage), gluttony (opposed to self-control), etc.

When describing these elements of our humanity in The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis simply referred to them as the Head, Chest and Belly. For simplicity’s sake, I will use these descriptors of the three faculties or powers.

So, how does this model relate to psychomachia, or the spiritual battle within? Well, when we engage in serious self-reflection, we know that our thoughts, actions, and desires are far from perfect; we miss the mark. In short, our Heads, Chests and Bellies need some work. Plato and others believed that with a proper paideia (education and enculturation) each of these faculties could be cultivated in such a way that a person could experience internal harmony and live as a human being ought to live, virtuously. This holistic cultivation is echoed deeply within Christian asceticism. Saint Peter of Damaskos, a 12th century Church Father whose writings take up the majority of volume three of The Philokalia, summing up the teachings of many earlier Fathers, wrote in his Twenty-Four Discourses:

“Thus, in the Law, it is given pride of place: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,

and with all your might’ (Deut. 6:5). When I heard these words ‘with all your soul’ I was astounded and no longer needed

to hear the rest. For ‘with all your soul’ means with the intelligent, incensive, and desiring powers of the soul, because it is

of these three powers that the soul is composed. Thus, the intellect should think at all times about divine matters, while

desire should long constantly and entirely, as the Law says, for God alone and never for anything else; and the incensive

power should actively oppose only what obstructs this longing, and nothing else. St. John, consequently, was right in

saying that God is love. If God sees that, as He commanded, these three powers of the soul aspire to Him alone, then,

since He is good, He will necessarily not only love the soul, but through the inspiration of the Spirit will dwell and move

within it (cf. 2 Cor. 6: 16; Lev. 26: 12); and the body, though reluctant and unwilling—for it lacks intelligence—will end by

submitting to the intelligence, while the flesh will no longer rise in protest against the Spirit, as St. Paul puts it (cf. Gal. 5-

17).” [11]

As a Christian, it is important to emphasize that in this life people are not always going to hit the mark. In fact, we will fail quite a bit; [12] however, men and women are capable of great improvement, including noteworthy moral and intellectual heights—especially, and ultimately, with inspiration from the Holy Spirit. With that said, let me give you a (fictitious) scenario that shows how the three faculties or powers of the soul might work.

Let’s say I love brownies, especially moist and thick brownies. I go to a birthday party and after greeting everyone and wishing the host a happy birthday, I make a beeline over to the dessert table. My eyes see and my nose senses a tray of delicious brownies. I naturally partake of one. “Boy, that’s a gooooood brownie,” I think to myself. My belly wants another one. I look around to see if anyone is watching. My wife is nowhere in sight, so I take a second. The brownies are so good and I’m still hungry, so now I think about whether or not I should take a third brownie. I think to myself, “I really shouldn’t have another one. I ought to let the other guests enjoy them, plus I don’t need the calories, and I know I’ll feel guilty afterwards.” So, what do I do? I enjoy another scrumptious brownie. After the party, when my stomach is full, I ask myself, “Why did I do that? What’s wrong with me?”

The reason I overindulged and ignored my head (Logos) is because the desires of my belly (Epithumia) are strong, stronger than my head. In a one-to-one contest, the belly will regularly get the best of the head, and for this reason the head and chest (Thumos) must work together to overcome the excessive appetites of the belly. In this fictitious case, that did not happen. This is psychomachia in action. Ideally, the head would direct the belly, and even if it gets some resistance from the belly, a well-formed chest could come to the rescue.

It is interesting to note that the Gospels provide an example of temptations of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself that illustrates the three faculties of soul at work. Recall that in Matthew’s account, our Lord fasted for forty days in the desert before beginning His public ministry. The devil tempted Him in three ways—with bread, with power and with worldly recognition (4:1-11). When reading the passage, notice that the temptations correspond to three faculties of the soul—the Belly, with food to satisfy hunger; the Chest, with power; and the Head, with pride and glory. In each case, the Lord showed temperance, fortitude and prudence as He rebuked the devil. Unlike in the example with the brownies, where the internal battle was lost, there was no contest between the will of Satan and the Lord Jesus Christ, Whose soul was perfectly synergized with the Divine will.[13]

This type of internal battle could be applied to all kinds of decisions we make, small and large, but the belly is not always the culprit. Sometimes it’s the head; it could be ignorance, pride, or ingratitude, and other times it’s the chest; it may be cowardice, anger, or procrastination. Perhaps it is all three faculties that are failing. For this reason, a proper formation and education of the Head, Chest and Belly is necessary for a well-ordered soul. A good paideia or praxis properly informs the Logos with knowledge and logical thinking, prudence with some humility (i.e. a moral compass); it informs the Thumos with good habits that build strength of character, including virtues such as courage and perseverance in pursuit of piety; and it trains the Epithumia with affections or desires for good and beautiful things, with moderation. It is the latter which should be the starting point.

The Bottom-Up Approach

You have probably heard of the Seven Deadly Sins, the sins or passions at the root of immorality that separate one from God. Before there were seven, there were eight: Pride, Vanity, Despondency, Anger, Sorrow, Avarice, Lust, and Gluttony.[14] The Church Fathers categorized these not merely as outward actions, but fundamentally as logismoi—the foundational thoughts and mental suggestions that serve as the root cause of all sin. If you were advising someone about how to tackle them, where would you start? All at once? One at a time? If one, would it be with the chief sin, pride? This might seem intuitive, but it’s not the approach that corresponds with the Map of the Soul, with the ancient approach to harmony of the soul and purity of heart.

The ancient approach to tackling sin and the passions takes Gluttony as the starting point, especially by the early Christian writers.[15] This approach attends to the affectionate or desiring part of the soul, with the ultimate goal of overcoming Pride, which is tied to the Intelligent part of the soul. Why? First of all, Gluttony or lack of self-control with food was the cause of the Primordial Sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden, one of the reasons fasting became an essential ascetic[16] practice among the Old Testament Hebrews and early Christians. Second, while Gluttony is a serious obstacle to virtue and a relationship with God, it is easier to tackle than Pride, which is considered to be the pinnacle of the passions. By beginning at the beginning—by focusing on Gluttony—one could work his way up the succession of passions that are interwoven like a linked chain. Gluttony is connected to Lust as well as Sloth. Lust is connected to Greed. Greed is connected to Wrath, and so on. This approach aims first to overcome the Sensual passions, then the Intelligent.[17]

Struggling against these passions requires, first, a recognition of them (i.e. understanding the Map of the Soul), and second, employing ascetical weapons or tools to struggle against them. This is primarily the job of the nous. As the watchman of the soul, a vigilant nous stands guard at the gates of the heart, intercepting negative logismoi before they can drop down into the epithumia (the Belly) and stir up sinful desires. This is why the Church Fathers emphasize weapons like fasting in the case of Gluttony, vigilance, and various means of focusing one’s attention on good thoughts and virtuous habits.[18] Asceticism serves as a form of training or exercise required to protect and increase our focus and commitment. Furthermore, it cultivates the Epithumia, or desiring power of the soul, which lays the groundwork for the ordering of the Thumos and Logos—the Chest and Head.

From Warfare to Union: The Church’s Medicine for the Soul

Having described psychomachia and the faculties of the soul, how is this relevant to us in our daily lives? How does it aid us in our own spiritual progress? Considering the composite nature of our being, we know that it is not enough to only educate the mind. Knowledge, logical thinking and especially good thoughts, are essential, to be sure, but they only take you so far. Our character needs strengthening and training, as in virtues like fortitude, and our appetites or desires need to be cultivated so that we are moderate and so we desire good, true and beautiful things rather than negative, corrupt and counterfeit ones. How do we do all of this?

While Plato’s pre-Christian teachings about the soul were instructive, insofar as human reasoning could produce good ends, they were incomplete and without grace. Fortunately, our Holy Church has a two-thousand-year-old prescription for goodness or holiness that properly forms the human soul, opening us up to God’s grace or energies, thus enabling us to live in communion with God in this life and in the next. The remedy is none other than the sacramental and ascetic way of life initiated by the Lord Jesus Christ, passed on by His apostles and generations of faithful Christians to the present time. It entails the reception of the Holy and Life-giving Mysteries of the Church (i.e. Baptism and Chrismation, Eucharist, Confession, etc.) coupled with a life of repentance and humility.[19] This includes continual prayer, communal worship, guarding the mind and heart against negative logismoi through watchfulness (nepsis),[20] contemplating Sacred Scripture and other God-inspired texts, learning obedience, fasting and other self-denying practices, as well as almsgiving.[21] This medicine or therapy, experienced under the guidance of a wise spiritual director,[22] properly orders each faculty of the soul so that our thoughts, actions and desires are harmonized toward union with God. Ultimately, this synergy between God and man results in holiness in this life and theosis in the next.[23]

*see the book recommendations beneath the endnotes.

Jason Caros is a husband, father and long-time educator who served as a classical school headmaster for twelve years. He is a cradle Orthodox Christian who has taught classes on Orthodox theology, worship, and spirituality to high school students and adults in his churches in Florida and Texas. This essay was originally written in 2022.

Endnotes

[1] A well-known saying of the fourth century church father, St. Ephraim the Syrian, was “The beginning of salvation is to know oneself” (Complete Works, Assemani ed., 1.254).

[2] Nous (vοῦς) is the Greek word often translated as “mind” in the New Testament. The word does not refer to the discursive aspect of the Intellect (dianoia) but to the receptive or intuitive aspect of the soul. In the case of Eastern Church Fathers, nous was also considered to be the “eye of the soul.”

[3] The Shepherd of Hermas, bk, 2

[4] Third Century on Love, vv. 92-93. Note that the word “intellect,” sometimes also translated into English as “mind,” often refers to the Greek word nous that is frequently found in the writings of the Eastern Church Fathers.

[5] The name Psychomachia was coined by the fourth-century Christian poet, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens. It was the title of his allegorical poem that depicts a military battle between personified virtues and vices fighting for control of a human soul.

[6] Passions, rooted in the Greek word pathos (πάθος), refers to natural impulses originally placed in man by God; the passions can be spoken of as neutral or good, but they are often referred to in Christian literature as sinful passions that need to be educated and transfigured.

[7] Timothy Patitsas uses this name in his work The Ethics of Beauty.

[8] The word “heart” has been used several times thus far. In the passages from Deuteronomy, and in the context of the Christian saying, “purity of heart,” heart refers to the center or core of one’s being. It is the place where divine grace is received and where the Kingdom of God is experienced within. It is sometimes called the “deep heart.”

[9] The chariot allegory found in Plato's Phaedrus was frequently used as a teaching device by many Church Fathers.

[10] Taken from the Greek, the names are more fully: Logistikon, Thymikon, Epithymitikon.

[11] Page 253. The Philokalia is a classic collection of spiritual and ascetic writings composed between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by Eastern Church Fathers, focusing on inner watchfulness, prayer, and the purification of the soul.

[12] Another word for sin (harmartia) is “failure”; failure to hit the mark, going off course, or failure to achieve the purpose.

[13] Here, the emphasis is on the perfection of the three faculties of the soul—intelligent, spirited and desiring. This takes into account the Church’s teachings, affirmed by the Ecumenical Councils, about the Incarnation and natures of The Lord Jesus Christ, namely that God has assumed every aspect of our nature, body and soul, and that Christ has one hypostasis and two natures, divine and human, with two wills. The human will is submissive to the divine will.

[14] The Seven Deadly Sins were derived from an earlier list of eight thoughts or passions described by Evagrios of Pontikos and brought to the West by St. John Cassian in the early fifth century. In the late sixth century, Saint Gregory the Great of Rome edited the number from eight to seven, which became the standard in the West.

[15] Works from many of these writers can be found in a multi-volume anthology called The Philokalia, which means love of the beautiful and good, including some writings from St. John Cassian.

[16] The word “ascetic” comes from a Greek word, askeō (“I train” or “I exercise”), and refers to rigorous spiritual training or self-discipline—to overcome passions, purify the heart, and draw closer to God. St. Paul refers to this self-discipline in 1 Corinthians 9:27 among other places.

[17] “The whole effort of the ascetic should be devoted to this: to preventing the higher part of the soul from being brought low through the uprising of sensual pleasures. For how can the soul gaze in freedom upon the noetic light that is akin to it, if it is dragged down by carnal pleasure?” – from “A Selection from the Holy Fathers on Prayer and Attentiveness,” The Philokalia, v. 5, p. 309.

[18] In the Christian context, no passion can be overcome without God’s grace; this cooperation is what is known spiritual “synergy.”

[19] Returning to the theme of self-knowledge, repentance and humility are essential signs that someone is on the path to holiness. In the famous parable about the Publican and Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14), the prideful Pharisee is spiritually blind whereas the penitent and humble tax-collector was more self-aware.

[20] All sins begin with thoughts. In the Patristic tradition, the mind (nous) and the heart are deeply interconnected. The nous is often described as the "eye of the soul" or the highest faculty of the mind, and its proper place is to rest inside the heart, acting as a sentry at the gates. The logismoi knock at the door of the mind, but their goal is to drop down and capture the heart. A significant and often-used phrase by the Saints in this context is πρόσεχε σεαυτῷ, or attend to thyself, rooted in the verse: “Attend to yourself and keep your heart diligently” (Dueteronomy 4:9).

[21] Almsgiving is sometimes referred to as mercy. The ancient word for alms used by the church is the Greek word, eleēmosynē (Gk. ἐλεημοσύνη), meaning compassion, mercy or loving-kindness. Christians are expected to serve and support the poor and those in need, in general.

[22] The Church Fathers teach that it is essential for everyone to be under the guidance of a spiritual father or mother. For a layperson, this is often a parish priest. For those who live in or frequently visit monasteries, this guide may be an elder eldress.

[23] Theosis refers to deification or union with God. Orthodox teaching about theosis, the third stage of the threefold salvific path that follows purification and illumination, is that for most people this occurs in the next life, but for some, the Saints (in the Greek, ἅγιοv, meaning holy ones), it can be experienced in this life first. The levels of spiritual perfection, which result from the uncreated grace or energies of God, develop in those who cooperate and respond to divine grace.

Book Recommendations

The Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition by Metropolitan Hierotheos

An important work on the passions and their cures. A shorter, introductory work by the same author on this topic is Orthodox Spirituality.

God’s Path to Sanity by Dee Pennock

This book introduces the therapeutic and ascetical methods used by the Church Fathers to diagnose, struggle against, and heal psychological and spiritual disorders of the soul.

“Waging War: destroying your demons” from Death to the World, issue 30.

A concise article on discerning and struggling against the passions.

On Watchfulness and Holiness by Hesychios the Priest

The volumes in the Philokalia are the ultimate collection of writings on the spiritual life. After reading some of the other books listed above, you will find that St. Hesychios’ text in volume 1 is an excellent place to start within the Philokalia.

Return to the homepage.